A long awaited critical edition of this seminal work by
Joshua Rifkin, in which he carefully reconstructs Bach's original text that were
made almost unreadable by his son, Carl Philipp Emanuel.

WORKS COVERED

BWV 232.

READERSHIP

Musicologists and serious performers.

RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION

Rifkin reconstructed the version of J. S. Bach by carefully
removing C.P.E.Bach's modifications.

t has
been known for some time that Joshua Rifkin was to produce his own edition of
Bach’s B-minor Mass, the work with which he established himself as a rigorous
scholar. This is the edition, which was published in November 2006

As anticipated, the ‘Preface’ is
informative and written in both German and English. There Rifkin outlines what
he has done in this edition: ‘it maintains a strict distinction between the
earlier Missa and Part I of the Mass as Bach ultimately left it in his
autograph score; and second, that it reproduces Part II in a form that
eliminates so far as possible the interventions of C. P. E. Bach (p. XII)’ by
carefully studying both the revisions entered in the autograph score and the
readings of the surviving copies made after Bach’s death. It is his detailed
study of these copies that provided him with the tools to reconstruct several
layers of revisions which C. P. E. Bach entered into his father’s autograph.

'Rifkin sets a new standard for us to
discuss what Bach wrote and what he did not'

The score itself is beautifully laid
out. Though infrequent, his editorial additions are noticeable, which
supplements, in Rifkin’s view, what Bach should have entered to make clear his
intentions. There are also occasional footnotes, which immediately draw our
attention to those important textual problems and uncertainties that performers
should always be aware of. There are numerous other issues which are less
immediately relevant to the performers: they are dealt with in the ‘Kritischer
Bericht’ (pp. 254-273, in German only). They are nonetheless important for us to
learn what the editor considered in this edition.

With this edition, Rifkin has set a new
standard for us to discuss what Bach wrote, and what he did not.